The Right to Life: A Casey Cort Novel, #6

Summary

What wouldn't a mother do for her child?

Ready to start a new practice free from the stress and moral ambiguity of criminal law, Casey Cort accepts lucrative referrals from the Hudson Adoption Agency. But when she's ready to finalize a client's first adoption, she learns the child's origins aren't all they seem.

After escaping a brutal home life, Alile Rubidari is denied asylum in Britain. To avoid being deported to Africa, she ventures into the shady world of illegal au pairs… And discovers that her new young charge may be the child stolen from her. Without family, money, or legal status, Alile has no means to fight for her daughter. And the ambitious surgeon who claims to be the little girl's adoptive mother is fighting to keep her at all costs.

Caught in a battle of Biblical proportions, Casey prays for the wisdom of Solomon because both women will do anything for their daughter, but a judge can only choose one mother.

In this installment of the Casey Cort series, Aime Austin—a former trial lawyer in Cleveland—weaves a tale that blends the best of today's top legal thrillers with the heart and soul of women's fiction, in a story ripped from real-world headlines.

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The Right to Life - Aime Austin

Alile Useni Rubadiri

I am Alile Useni. Born in Buram in Sudan. I am eighteen years old. My parents were killed in a siege on my village, I repeated aloud for the hundredth if not thousandth time.

My neighbor’s Shhhh was as sharp as a knife. You’ve been mumbling to yourself for hours.

Silenced, I turned my head. The Yoruba woman cramped next to me gave me an evil glare then her heavy lids came down over her large brown eyes. Her scarf, a tower of blue, green, and gold tilted to the side, bumping against my own head. I wanted to shove her and her silk back across the armrest. Doing that would draw the wrong kind of attention, though. I needed to be very careful in the next few hours. I was so close to reaching my first goal, I could taste it.

Ignoring her invasion of my narrow space, I did what she’d done, closed my eyes. One minute I was staring at the back of my lids. In the next second, I was seeing Kantayeni. Her beautiful chubby baby face floated before my eyes.

Then the ugly one of my Aunt Umi erased that of my daughter. Umi’s last words to me rang in my head like a perpetual bell. Get me three hundred thousand kwacha by your next birthday and I won’t turn her over to Robert Chiwasa.

Chiwasa ran an orphanage in the next village. The orphanage used to be a place, especially in the beginning of AIDS, where a mother whose husband had died could drop off her child indefinitely while she got a job or got remarried or otherwise figured her life out. But since Chiwasa had gotten a second wife and a big brick house, the babies didn’t stay too long. No one had the guts to ask where they’d gone.

I had no idea how she expected me to come up with that kind of money. No one I knew had anything like that. Ready to throw myself on my father’s mercy for the final time, I’d left Yeni in Umi’s house and run the thirteen kilometers to my father, asking him for the money or at least for him to do something about my aunt’s threats.

The face of the man that had held me up to the night sky, and had told me a thousand stories was closed to me. He’d pushed me out telling me it was Umi’s right to ask for that now that I’d made another mouth to feed. I should get the money, he spat, in the same way I’d gotten pregnant.

I’d told him months ago, when a bump formed in my dress, when he was holding the broomstick over my head, that his brother was the father. He’d called me a liar and beat me with it anyway.

When Yeni was born looking exactly like uncle Onani, I thought he’d finally believe me. But his face and that of his new wife were closed to me, now and forever it seemed. Now that I was no longer his pure little girl.

Defeated, my breasts rock hard with milk for Yeni, I dragged myself back to my aunt and uncle’s, ready for a sleepless night caring for Yeni and finishing the housework I hadn’t completed while in the capital. But the door was locked tight. Not a single sound came from inside. The metal bars shut me out of getting in the house. The white stucco I’d painted myself hard as a rock. For hours I stood there, pounding on the door and crying, milk running down the front of my cotton dress, until I lost my voice.

Despite the darkness, I started the long walk to the orphanage in Chitedze. Maybe Umi had already taken Yeni there. I may have nothing, but I could figure out how to scrape a living from the dirt like so many others. My father had always said the Europeans had come because we had hectares of rich and fertile land. I’m sure I could find a bit to farm. The big companies didn’t watch every hectare. Lots of local people had taken a few rows of corn and peas for themselves.

Or maybe I could take Yeni to the city. Daddy couldn’t turn me away with a baby in my arms. Or if his lock were as tight as Umi’s, I could stand with some of the other people on the side of the road looking for day work. I could cook. I could clean. I could wash clothes. I’d been doing all that for two and a half years. Yeni was still small enough I could strap her to me with a cloth. I’d make sure she was good and quiet. At least until I collected enough kwacha to figure out my next step.

Halfway to Chitedze, the pain in my breasts became too much to handle. When I could no longer see anyone in either direction on the road, I huddled under newly planted stalks of maize. I squeezed out as much milk as I could, spilling it into the brown soil. I tried not to imagine the worst about the orphanage. That Umi had taken Yeni there and she was gone already.

The rumor was that they were sold to the highest bidder. I wasn’t one hundred percent sure I believed any of that gossip, but my mama always said there was a bit of truth behind stories like that. Certainly, the last thing I wanted was to lose Yeni to the richest European who wanted to save an African baby.

I’d never get her back then. In the morning, I took myself to the front door. My milk came again when I heard the babies’ cries through the window. No longer ashamed, I knocked anyway. After five minutes of talking with a matron and walking through, I was convinced that my baby wasn’t there. I sighed with relief. Umi wasn’t so heartless after all. I walked back home weak with hunger and exhaustion. Umi still refused to answer the door, though.

Completing the triangle one last time, I took the long road to Lilongwe. Instead of my father’s house, I walked into the city. A man approached me. For three dollars, I did for him what I’d done for my uncle. For three more dollars I did it again. By the end of the week, I had enough money for a clean dress and a bus ticket to Nairobi. I didn’t know where I’d go after that, but I dreamt of flying to London, to Paris, to somewhere I could get enough money to get Yeni and save her from a life like mine.

I opened my eyes, blinking back the tears that came when I thought of my daughter being without me. She’d have formula instead of mother’s milk. Learn to roll over from Umi or worse from someone at the Chitedze orphanage. Maybe even take her first step without me. After that, though, I’d be there for every milestone, I silently promised her.

We’d be safe and free in this beautiful new place with its running water inside the house, and shops that had all the food you could ever want. Where you could summon the police if anything bad ever happened and not worry that the corrupt ones would blackmail you. I never wanted my baby to live like I had. Never wanted her hiding from men who treated her like she was an adult, even when she was a child.

Ma’am, would you like breakfast? That proper English voice came from a tall pale woman on the other side of me. I’d watched her walk up and down the aisles the whole flight. No matter how many pins she shoved in her nearly colorless flyaway hair, it wouldn’t stay off her face. Right now, before she’d asked me the question about breakfast, she’d blown strands from in front of her eyes. It hadn’t worked.

I must have been staring at her a long time. I didn’t tell her the only white people I’d ever seen were foreign workers sent to help us find water, or plant their strange seeds. She did a slow blink, her eyelids covering then revealing light nearly colorless eyes.

Breakfast? It’s a proper English one today.

I nodded. Five seconds later, the woman in the dark blue uniform let down the tiny table built into the seat in front of me and a small gray tray appeared. There was a sausage, bacon, eggs, tomato and mushroom all cramped into the small plastic rectangle.

Tea? Milk? she asked, standing again each of her hands on a different kettle.

I nodded. Cloudy tea filled a small plastic cup. Juice covered in thick foil stood next to it. Yogurt was another foil-topped container. A small cake wrapped in paper crowded out any remaining space on the tray. With my hands, I picked up the sausage and bit into it. The taste was odd, salty, but I ate it anyway.

Roll?

The woman in blue was back, this time with a basket of bread.

Can I have two?

She nodded and put two different kinds of bread in front of me with a pair of tongs.

I’d seen more food on this flight than I’d ever seen in any one meal. What was worse was the amount of food the other passengers threw away. Earlier in our flight, the attendants had slid entire trays of uneaten remains into thick blue garbage bags.

I carefully wrapped the bread and cake and juice in a napkin and shoved them into the nylon pack I’d stuffed under the chair. There was enough food in there to feed my old village for a week and me for longer if I planned carefully.

Everything I didn’t save, I ate. My stomach felt full to bursting, but I couldn’t carelessly tip the food into the blue trash bag like many of the passengers around me. I just couldn’t. I swallowed down bile. Maybe I shouldn’t eat. What if Yeni didn’t recognize me with fat cheeks or a big stomach.

Minutes later, the plane took a steep dip and the food I’d stuffed down nearly came back up a second time. I swallowed the spit in my mouth again and again.

The Nigerian woman turned toward me and slowly lifted her eyes.

First time on a plane? she asked in softly accented English.

I nodded afraid to open my mouth.

She patted her headscarf back into place then turned to look out of the tiny window. I wished I’d had that seat. If I could press my forehead against the cold glass, it might make me feel better. But after seeing the way people had rushed to their seats hours ago like squatters in a newly empty hut, it didn’t seem like the kind of request that would be honored.

A screeching noise came over the loudspeaker drowning out whatever the woman next to me was saying.

Ladies and gentlemen. We’ll be landing at London Heathrow airport in thirty minutes’ time. We don’t have clearance for landing yet. We’re waiting on air traffic control. We know you have many choices of airline. The folks up here on the flight deck and the One World Alliance thank you for choosing British Airways.

Choices.

I’d had precious few of those in my life. Choosing clothes, food, and airplane companies was so odd to consider. Maybe this is what life had in store for me. Maybe I’d be like these people flying from one continent to another looking like they didn’t have a care in the world. Sure that they could go anywhere anytime they wanted.

The plane jerked again. It felt like falling. I closed my eyes. Opened them again. No one was screaming or in a panic, so this must be normal. Out of the corner of my eye, blue and green silk shimmered. Then a strong hand covered my own that had been gripping the armrest between us.

I remember my first flight out of Africa. You’ll be fine.

The warm hand reminded me much of my mother’s. The Yoruba woman didn’t say another word, but she didn’t let go either. Not until the plane stopped moving.

Asylum.

The words crept diagonally up the airport wall. White letters against blue background. In more languages than I recognized. None of which was my mother tongue. But I knew better than to expect that here of all places. This was England, not Malawi where Yao had been the first words I’d heard spoken.

I shook my head as the queue of people pushed at me from both directions. Arabic, that was the language I was to declare as my own. If I wanted to stay in this adopted country, I had to repeat the story I’d been supplied in Arabic. And I’d learned it, the Arab’s language with its swooping letters written backward. I wasn’t nearly as stupid as my uncle had always said. In a matter of months, I’d learned enough Arabic to pretend I was from Muslim northern Africa.

While the group of travelers moved forward, I worried the small blue and white paper in my hands. I’d filled it out like I’d been told with a mix of lies and truth. I’d practiced my new truth for the nine hours it had taken us to fly from Nairobi to London.

I couldn’t stop my lips from moving as I rehearsed my answers one last time. My name was now Alile Useni. My middle name was a popular Arabic last name that would not arouse suspicion.

I wrote my date of birth as 24 May 1986. I’d added four years to place myself firmly in adulthood. I didn’t want anyone to herd me like the child I really was. A child in the eyes of the law if not in the eyes of men.

In my village, men had been the law.

I skipped the sections about my whereabouts in the UK. That would be anyplace where this government chose to house me. Occupation and passport number I left blank as well. I’d be more than willing to do any work that I could get although I hoped beyond hope that I could go to school first. I’d always wanted to be a girl who finished school.

There was only a single girls high school in my village. I’d always hoped that I could one day be one of those confident girls in a starched pink and white uniform walking about as if they owned the world.

My father had said that paying my fees would have been a waste of money. I was luckier than most as my mom taught me from my brothers’ discarded school books when they were away. Even if I never made it to school in the UK, I was here to make sure that my daughter would.

Yeni.

A wave of longing so big came over me that it nearly drowned me. My hand shook as the line moved forward. The paper fluttered to the shiny floor. I bent to pick it up. The people behind me bumped and almost knocked me over as I was only two or three people away from the border protection officers. The other passengers were probably eager to get home or start their vacations. No one glanced twice at a girl like me.

I didn’t see any guns or armed soldiers, but the very pale men and women looked less than friendly. Their whole job was keeping people like me from coming into their country. My whole job today was convincing them to let me stay. Then I could send for Yeni.

I looked to the paper which revealed my last lie. Place of birth: Buram, Sudan. A city nearly destroyed by war and lacking any kind of formal administration was now my claimed home.

Ma’am, please step forward. Number two is free. A woman in a purple suit and white gloves waved me to the desk. I handed over my wrinkled paper to the official seated behind the desk.

I reached into the pocket of my rucksack, retrieved the booklet with the Sudanese national bird, a secretary bird, on its green cover. I handed him the documents I’d traded my soul for. I took a deep breath and said the words I’d practiced a million times in the last few months.

I claim asylum.

Two

Alile

March 15, 2005

Stand up. They only get you if you’re lying down, the woman with the emerald green hijab said to me. As quickly as I could, without attracting too much attention, I stashed the picture of Yeni in my shirt pocket. Yearning that had stolen my breath went as swiftly as it had come.

I turned to the woman who’d spoken. I listened to her further admonitions to shake out my shirt and brush off my skin in a soft-spoken voice and did as I was told. I scratched the bumps that had risen under the red blouse I’d been wearing for two or three days.

I only had four shirts in my pack. The white one was filthy, as was the yellow. I was saving the last blue one in case I had a meeting with someone who could make a decision about me staying.I didn’t know when I’d be able to wash them or even where.

Don’t scratch! That will only make it worse, another woman whispered fiercely from her cot across the room. This was in heavily accented English. There were thirty-six of us in this big sterile room. I’d counted the bunk beds hundreds of times to help me to sleep, to keep me from losing my mind with worry about my flesh and blood thousands of kilometers from here.

There are bugs. I didn’t think there were bugs in England, I whispered. Though after I said it, I realized it was stupid and juvenile. Of course there were insects. There were more of them than there were of us on earth, one of the village girls who went to school had shared breathlessly after coming home from a science lesson, books weighing her pack down.

There are bedbugs everywhere, the second woman said to me. She was black like me. For the first time in months, my curiosity overcame my self-protective nature.

I tried not to let the itch bother me as I sat down again on the mattress and leaned my body against the metal pole that held the bed up above.

Where are you from? I asked a skinny black woman in Arabic. It was the first time I’d talked to anyone—voluntarily. The smuggler’s advice had been to keep my mouth shut and only talk to the government people in charge of my asylum claim.

Women who’d lied to get into the country, women like me, had had their claims denied when their roommates alerted the authorities. There were limits to the number of people the UK would let in. He’d said we were all in a fight to the death competition for the few spots in the quota.

She shook her head as if I’d spoken a language foreign to her. I asked the question again in English.

Somalia, she answered.

I nodded. There wasn’t a need to say much of anything after that. Conflicts dotted the African landscape like wildlife.

I’m from Iran, the green-scarved woman said in Arabic. You?

It was the common language here in this place, after English.

Malawi nearly passed my lips. My spine went rigid. I was horrified by the momentary lapse, even if it had only been mental.

Sudan, I said. South Sudan, I corrected. I mentally reviewed the facts in my head. The war had started in 1983. It was calm for now, but tensions could flare up at any time. I’d had to leave because I was displaced. Because I was raped by a gang of men when I’d been trying to find firewood while my family was staying at the camps near Darfur. There are to be two countries one day soon. That is the hope after the cease fire.

They both nodded, the weight of men’s conflicts weighing heavily on all of us. Asylum wouldn’t exist otherwise. The women glanced at each other, something passing between them. I didn’t know what and immediately regretted saying anything.

Over the last five months it had taken me to travel from my home country to the UK, I’d been told time and again that it was best to say as little as possible about anything. Any kind of disclosure invited questions. Warm brown skin and compassionate eyes, like my mother’s, had made me vulnerable. I’d be careful not to make that mistake again.

I decided the safest route was to change the subject. Where can I wash my clothes?

The sink? The Somali woman shrugged. Her own clothes were dusty and stained.

They come by every two weeks. The next pickup will be in the Friday, the Iranian woman said in halting English.

I lifted my blouse from my pants and shook it again. Chill air stole up my chest as the huge institutional door swung open.

Tentatively, I raised my right hand as did the Persian woman and a Chinese woman who had been next to me on the bus here from the airport.

Great. You three. Pack your stuff. You’re going to housing provided by the Home Office.

I turned my back to the center of the room and slipped Yeni’s picture into a pocket I’d sewn on the interior of my backpack. My fingers lingered against the slick papers, feeling for the four photographs I’d smuggled this long way. There was little else to pack as I’d not changed my clothes since arriving to this place.

I hoisted the pack over my shoulders and stood at attention as I’d learned across the days and miles traveling from Malawi. The uniformed people who work for governments and NGOs rewarded obedience.

It took the Chinese woman a bit longer. She had draped all sorts of silk around her bed. My village could have eaten for a week on what those silks probably cost. I wondered, not for the first time, why she was here. Looked to me as if her